Digiweb, Ireland’s leading independent telecom operator, today announced a significant upgrade of its infrastructure, having replaced its Dublin data centre backbone network with packet optical networking solutions from BTI Systems, the networking company that creates high-capacity application-aware service infrastructures for the metro. Digiweb, the largest Irish-owned telecoms operator, provides Carrier Ethernet, MPLS, broadband voice and data services to a network of government, corporate and residential customers throughout Ireland.

Driven by the need for a flexible platform to deliver SDH, TDM and Ethernet-based services, Digiweb selected the BTI Systems 7000 Series, as the multi-service packet optical networking platform, along with the 10-port Multiprotocol Muxponder (10-port MXP) and Dual 10G Multiprotocol Transponder (10G DTPR). Together, these combine WDM capacity and regional reach extension with optical service delivery, integrated Carrier Ethernet switching capabilities and service aggregation for various protocols onto high-capacity wavelengths in one platform.

With dense fibre coverage throughout Dublin, Digiweb now has dedicated fibre channels and wavelength management on one platform, avoiding the capital expenditure that would have been required to augment its fibre network infrastructure, and ensuring available network bandwidth and fibre capacity. The BTI Systems 7000 Series provides convergence of the service layer with the optical and transport layer, simplifying the network, providing scalable wavelength and Ethernet service capacity and giving Digiweb the foundation to build a robust, cost-effective and agile metro services infrastructure.

"We chose BTI Systems because the products are flexible and cost-effective, which are both necessary to help us establish a network that will allow to us scale," said Alan Weadick, Head of Networks and Voice for Digiweb. "The ability to work alongside the engineering team in-country at BTI Systems’ development centre in Belfast ensured we would meet our goal of ensuring the high-capacity backbone necessary to deliver a broader range of innovative services for our customers. This scalability coupled with our fibre assets gives us the assurance that the network can scale to the terabit level required to serve our customers into the future."

"This is a key win for BTI Systems, not only because we are replacing competing equipment, but also because it is another example of our ongoing commitment to the European market and our ability to solve network challenges across the region," said VP of EMEA Sales for BTI Systems, Jim Crum. "Digiweb is our first customer in Ireland, but it has the same challenges network operators face around the globe – dealing with a highly-competitive market and shifting customer demands – so having a network platform like the 7000 Series that can scale without requiring major operational investments is a key building block to a more profitable business."